Stay within your limits!
And:Look, if a person becomes a jihadi because they were "provoked" by such innocuous and trivial things (and even more so, if they're "provoked" by something like the war in Iraq by which the West has made major sacrifices to bring the possibility of freedom to millions of Muslims in Iraq), then that person is not "lost" in any meaningful sense: they were lost to begin with. They are picking teams, their true colors are coming out.
The notion that there is a large group of Muslims out there who are "swing-jihadis," who could swing for civilization, or could swing for the jihad, and that we need to tempt them to our side, is absurd. The line between supporting murderous jihad and not supporting murderous jihad is not a fine line, it's a chasm. Anyone who could potentially become a jihadist is a lost cause from the get-go, and it's absurd to suggest we should be courting their goodwill.
The central problem with the NIE report, therefore, is that it presumed a particular moral judgment:
to say that the NIE shows the war is "creating" jihadis is no different from looking at social science data showing a correlation between crime and poverty, and saying that poverty therefore "causes" crime. Wrong, it's just data, and the moral judgment you draw from that data is your own.
Yarbles. Then my smartitude was confirmed by Krauthammer a few days later:
The question posed -- does the Iraq war increase or decrease the world supply of jihadists? -- is itself an exercise in counting angels on the head of a pin. Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as construction of a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.
He also pointed out that Iraq had been a rallying cry jihadis long before 2003. And as to the notion that any given "motivating factor" whatsoever is a "cause" of terrorism, Krauthammer was all:
does anyone imagine that had the jihadists in Iraq remained home they would now be tending petunias rather than plotting terror attacks?
No, they would not be tending petunias. Anyway, the lesson to be gleaned is that the authors of the NIE reached beyond their sphere of expertise, and did the work of philosophers when really their capability lies in collecting this data.
Now, here comes a story about a British coroner who has examined the body of a journalist killed in Iraq by a bullet fired from the gun of a U.S. soldier. Upon examining bone fragments and DNA, and reading a thermometer that had been skillfully inserted into the cold stiff anus of this man of letters, the British coroner has determined that a "war crime" occurred, because the U.S. soldiers were acting like cowboys. Let's follow his reasoning process:
Ok, he was shot in the head. By Americans. And..."Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said.
Um, I'm not sure how you get this from the corpse you're lookin' at, but anyway for the sake of argument let's say you're right ..."There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces." [says Walker]
"There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire upon the minibus" [Walker says].
Ok, I think you skipped a step or three. Let me back up. Does your examination under microscope of the DNA of the deceased leave no room whatsoever for the possibility that the U.S. soldiers thought the minibus presented a threat somehow? And, has your dissection of his skull tissue fibers entirely foreclosed the possibility that the U.S. soldiers were not aiming at the minivan? Come to think of it, is the type of examination a coroner does really informative at all as to the legality of the act? Or, is that not a legal conclusion to be drawn later, based in part perhaps on a coroner's data, along with a host of other evidence and in light of the law, whatever the relevant law happens to be? Never mind, Walker is certain, as are the family members of the deceased:
Wow, lady, a very serious war crime, that sounds very serious.A statement read by an attorney for Lloyd's widow, Lynn, said the court established that the "circumstances of his death from an American bullet whilst being ferried to hospital is a very serious war crime" and that the Marines should now stand trial.
Ok then. I mean, true, Lynn wasn't there, and well yes the journalist was shot during crossfire between Iraqis and the soldiers, and then the Iraqis for whatever reason helped the journalist into their minivan and sped away while the gunbattle raged, but I mean...well, I'll admit it, I'm not an expert in the law of warfare. So I'll defer to Lynn. I'm sure Lynn sits at home in the Midlands somewhere, studying Department of Defense protocols while feeding her cats and watching Big Brother. You go, Lynn.Her statement said "U.S. forces appeared to have allowed their soldiers to behave like trigger-happy cowboys in an area in which there were civilians traveling on a highway, both Iraqi and European."
I've got an idea, while we're at it. How about this abortion debate? Some people are very committed to the idea that women have the right to choose what to do with their own bodies, while some people find that the life of the fetus is a more compelling consideration in most circumstances. Why don't we just bring in the CIA to issue another NIE telling us which moral consideration is more compelling. While they're at it, they can show how an increase in the number of abortions has "caused" an increase in abortion clinic bombings.
So my point is, everyone, please, stay within your limits. Intelligence-gathering-experts, gather your data. Coroners, coronate. CIA spooks are not moral philosophers, and I will not take them seriously when they look at a heap of data and draw the moral conclusion that a person who represents a number in that heap made a given moral choice because the world works according to determinism rather than according to human free will; and, I will mock and mock and mock when a coroner looks at the angle a bullet entered a body and from his findings make the legal conclusion that the firing of the bullet was a "very serious war crime". That's simply chock-full of dumbness. Not even grieving family members will be spared my stinging mockery.
Cross-blurted here.
2 Comments:
Gormless Norman - I am impressed by the logic of your post. Some of us (from jihadwatch) are trying to create a "Handbook for Infidel Debators", which we are assembling at islam-watch to take on, in a logical rebuttal format, many of the myths, lies etc. prevalent about Islam.
It strikes me that the Myth that you are rebutting (in quite a concise and logical fashion) - namely the notion that "fighting the jihad creates more jihadis" or "fighting terrorism creates more terrorism" is the sort of thing that belongs in our handbook. See the introduction here:
Handbook Introduction
And the topic list for rebuttals is here:
Topic List
The "myth" you are addressing here isn't precisely covered in the topics list but I think it belongs under section 6: "Shoot the messenger."
Its very similar to the idea that if you criticize Islam then you are responsible for the violent backlash. In this case, if you fight your assaulters, then you are responsible for creating more of them. Somehow, we left this specific topic out of the list but it certainly belongs there, it's so commonly peddled by the apologists. If you are interested, follow the links to the Discussion Thread and propose adding this topic to section 6 (or wherever it belongs - we can sort all this at the end) and I think you already have at least half of an already quite logical rebuttal ready. Check out the other topics while you're at it. We could use your sort of logic for this project.
Caroline
Caroline, if you like my logic, you should be sure to check out my red herrings. They're (2 fingers kissing to lips: ::smack::!) magnifique!
I'll check out Islam Watch.
It seems to me this particular meme (to use a word I learned here) is filed under "Reasons we should not fight back." The meme is entitled "our fighting back inspires our enemies to be even more mean to us." Whereas cringing and submitting, I suppose, is supposed to earn their compassion. Wrong! That's backwards: our cringing submission earns their disdain, as it should.
Also under the heading "Reasons we should not fight back" is subcategory "Muslims are a force of nature." That goes: when a Muslim does something, it's because he has been "sparked," it is a "reaction." Muslims are elements on the periodic table, almost, or they are chemical compounds, which combust when combined with other compounds such as mockery. Or they are animals, like bees, whose rage is stirred up. This lefty meme is rooted in a determinist view (the one the NIE report presumed, as I discuss), rather than the view that people bear moral responsibility. For this reason, it is deeply insulting. I've said before, let's treat Muslims with some more respect. Meaning, when they do bad things, let's give them the desserts of those bad things, instead of coming up with reasons why they're not responsible.
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